Current Time

Currency

nightlife

Chicago nightlife

Chicago's reputation for unadorned, hard-drinking bars has softened in recent years. A taste for lush, nighttime revelry has brought in swish cocktail lounges and baroque hybrid venues, such as the Violet Hour and Sepia, a Fulton River District lounge-and-restaurant combo in a 19th-century printing shop (123 N. Jefferson St.; 312-441-1920; www.sepiachicago.com). And while the city's premier blues clubs still draw the country's best blues and jazz musicians, a growing alternative music scene, centered in Bucktown and Wicker Park, has begun jockeying for Chicagoans' attention.